Blitz Bureau
LANSING: The Michigan Supreme Court has denied Robert F. Kennedy’s request to have his name removed from the state’s general election ballot, reversing a lower court ruling and closing the last legal avenue available to Kennedy in the case.
In a split 5–2 ruling issued on Sept. 9, the Michigan Supreme Court reinstated the original ruling by the Michigan Court of Claims, which denied Kennedy’s motion for mandamus relief, an extraordinary legal remedy that requires a plaintiff to demonstrate a clear legal right and that the defendant, in this case the Michigan Secretary of State, has a clear duty to act.
The high court ruled that Kennedy did not provide a clear legal basis requiring the removal of his name from the November ballot and failed to identify a law that would leave no room for discretion in this matter on the part of election officials.
“Plaintiff has neither pointed to any source of law that prescribes and defines a duty to withdraw a candidate’s name from the ballot nor demonstrated his clear legal right to performance of this specific duty, let alone identified a source of law written with ‘such precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgement,’” reads the majority opinion, which reversed an appeals court’s decision that sided with Kennedy and reinstated the lower court’s decision that dismissed his request with prejudice.
Michigan Supreme Court Justices Brian K. Zahra and David F. Viviano dissented. They argued that there was no statute prohibiting Kennedy from withdrawing from the election and no practical reason to deny Kennedy’s request to remove his name from the ballot before ballots were printed. Their dissent focused on harm to voters, contending that keeping Kennedy on the ballot would confuse voters and distort the true electoral choice.
“There is, however, a significant cost to the integrity of the election: the voters will be improperly denied a choice between persons who are actually candidates, and who are willing to serve if elected,” the dissenting justices wrote.
